Plasma and MRI biomarkers capture neuronal damage in former professional boxers

The medical question

Can blood tests and brain scans show the effects of repeated head impacts in former boxers?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about which blood and imaging measures track brain health in fighters after their careers. The study’s small group of nine former boxers and its memory-clinic comparison groups determine which questions it can inform.

Summary

Nine former boxers had higher blood levels of GFAP, p-tau181 and p-tau217 and smaller volumes in selected brain regions than memory-clinic patients without cognitive impairment, while memory and executive function scores did not differ significantly.

What the work reports

• Nine male former boxers gave blood samples and had brain MRI scans and cognitive tests at a memory clinic. They were compared with 15 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 14 patients with subjective cognitive decline who had no history of head injury.
• The boxers had higher plasma GFAP, p-tau181 and p-tau217 and smaller volumes in three sets of brain regions than the patients with subjective cognitive decline, with no significant difference in memory or executive function scores. In five boxers followed for an average of 6.8 years, plasma NfL and p-tau181 rose over time.
• The authors conclude that the former boxers showed biological signs of neurodegenerative processes without evident clinical decline, and that plasma GFAP, p-tau181 and p-tau217 may be useful markers of risk after repetitive head impacts.

Limits to keep in mind

• Nine boxers took part, all of them men, and the authors say the small sample reduced statistical power and limited adjustment for confounders.
• After a resampling check (bootstrapping), the differences in p-tau181, p-tau217 and brain volumes between boxers and patients with subjective cognitive decline were no longer statistically significant, while the GFAP difference remained.
• The study had no brain tissue data, and the authors state that they cannot tell whether CTE or Alzheimer’s disease lies behind the findings.
• The groups differed in education and age, different MRI scanners were used, and one of the nine boxers had competed only as an amateur.

Source issues recorded

• The title and abstract describe the boxers as former professionals. The Methods state that eight of the nine had professional careers and that one competed only as an amateur.
• The Methods describe comparison groups of 30 male patients. The abstract, Results and Table 1 give 15 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 14 with subjective cognitive decline. This record uses 15 and 14.
• The article’s text gives the boxers’ average exposure as 30.6 years. Its Table 1 gives 26.89 years. This record uses neither figure.
• The article gives its citation as volume 15, article 20005, with no issue number. Crossref and Europe PMC record issue 1.

Publication status and notices

Published in Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Scientific Reports.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary and a narrative review, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record. It holds an unmodified copy of the published article under the article’s licence.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

6 June 2025

Repository date

6 June 2025 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

6 June 2025 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), as stated by the publisher. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. An unmodified copy of the published article is held on this website under this licence. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The article states that Alzheimer Center Amsterdam is supported by Stichting Alzheimer Nederland and Stichting VUmc fonds, and that the NEwTON study is supported by Stichting Dioraphte. Eight authors report no competing interests; Vijverberg, Ossenkoppele, Scheltens and Teunissen declare consultancy fees, research funding, collaboration contracts, speaker contracts or employment involving pharmaceutical, diagnostics and life-sciences companies, listed in full in the article.

Catalog

FH-035, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Suzie Kamps, Suzan van Amerongen, Elena R Blujdea, Marloes I Hoppen, Bram Bongers, Kasper H Schelvis, et al.. Plasma and MRI biomarkers capture neuronal damage in former professional boxers. Scientific Reports. 2025;15(1):20005. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-93066-6

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Related on this website

• Research program: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)
• Research priority: Repetitive head impacts and CTE
• Fighter Health: Repetitive head impacts, brain imaging, CTE pathology and TES research